Claire Lehmann

David Lewis is pleased to present American artist Claire Lehmann’s debut solo exhibition with the gallery.

Lehmann's mysterious, frequently nocturnal paintings draw from sources as varied as the Flemish Primitives, aeronautic technical bulletins, how-to photography manuals, Gothic altarpieces, and radiographic simulators. The work explores the continuity of symbolic motifs over the course of centuries, but is united by a persistent concern with the iconography of the unseeable. The paintings in this exhibition, made from 2017 to 2021, consider technology's spells, sensuality and transience, and the fastness of images.

Prior to completing this body of work, Lehmann co-curated, with Ann Temkin, "Ileana Sonnabend: Ambassador for the New," at the Museum of Modern Art in New York; coauthored the anthology Artists Who Make Books (Phaidon/PPP Editions); and wrote "Color Goes Electric," a widely read history of standard test images and the digitization of color, for Triple Canopy.

A former editor at Cabinet and a contributor to Artforum, Lehmann received a BA from Harvard College in Visual and Environmental Studies (1998–2003). She has not exhibited her work publicly for eighteen years.